Bill and Ted’s Existentialist Adventure

When I was in high school, I read Samuel Beckett's iconic Waiting for Godot. I found it at times funny, perplexing, impenetrable, deep, and rewarding. The latter is perhaps ironic, given the play's famed lack of payoff. I've read it a couple of times since, seeing different points of connection and understanding while not fully denting the play's inscrutability.

And at roughly the same time in my life, I watched the slacker classic, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, featuring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as the titular characters. I found it at times silly, fantastical, funny, and good-natured. The easy camaraderie between the two leads was no small part of the film's enduring appeal. That, and George Carlin. Natch.

Never in my time on this planet did the idea of those two very different works of entertainment crossing streams enter my mind. Until yesterday, when I saw an announcement that Reeves and Winter will be starring in a Broadway production of Godot beginning in the fall of 2025. [Wailing guitar riff noises]

Much has been made about the seeming nothingness inherent in Beckett's play. The author himself generally refused to explain very much about the meaning of the work. As is our wont as humans, we've attached broad meaning to the text, everything from religious to political to sporting (there was a French cyclist named Roger Godeau that Beckett was said to admire). It's possible, in the end, that Godot was the original Seinfeld: a play about nothing.

Meanwhile, Bill and Ted is jammed with literary allusion (Socrates!), political intrigue (Napoleon is a dick!), commentary on technology's impact on the world ("Everything is different, but the same... things are more moderner than before... bigger, and yet smaller... it's computers... San Dimas High School Football rules!"), and in the end, is a riff on the importance of being excellent to one another. It's chaos, be kind, in a manner of speaking.

Now we get to see Bill and Ted play Vladimir and Estragon (in reverse order). The play marks Reeves' Broadway debut, though he's acted in several Shakespeare plays on the boards. Winter hasn't been on Broadway since he was a teenager in the 70s. As for me, I've never seen a Broadway show. The last play of any sort I saw was Spamalot at the National Theater in D.C. Erudite, I am perhaps not. But I'm excited.

Well, shall we go. / Yes, let's go. / (They do not move). Excellent!